Tomato Rice (No Masalas)

November 9, 2019

VJ’s favorite food is rice – fried rice, lemon rice, tamarind rice, tomato rice, any kind of rice. I am glad that he likes them since they are very easy to make. It doesn’t require much preparation and easy chopping. I don’t use a lot of masalas in my rice recipes. So it’s easily digestible for Arlo and not too spicy too. I usually add something on the side for something spicy for us. But I usually make separate for Arlo so that we don’t have to give up on our spice levels. This has me terribly worried since Arlo doesn’t get much exposure to spicy food at school I’m scared that he won’t eat the same food that we eat. Our cuisine is filled with pickles, and chutneys and spicy food. I cannot imagine having to give up that for anyone, not even my own kid. Everyone warned me about spicy food giving me severe heartburn, and they were right. I had severe heartburn and terrible aci d reflux starting the mid of second trimester. But it still didn’t matter. I couldn’t eat food with the heat in it. Everyone swore my kid was going to start eating spicy food, but he doesn’t.

This is a recipe from my mother-in-law’s book. She cooks it in a very specific way and VJ loves it. I love it too. It’s spicy, it’s tasty, it’s not too hard to make. And with leftover rice, it tastes much more amazing. I don’t know if it’s just me or it’s common with South Indians, but leftover rice recipes are pretty amazing. Growing up my mom didn’t make a lot of leftover rice recipes because we didn’t like it. Well, I didn’t like them much. My sister LOVED them. I liked to eat idli, upma, dosa or anything else that’s not rice. I wanted a lot of variety that my mom couldn’t keep up with, so she would give us dal rice every morning and send us to school. We hated it when we were younger. Always complained about it, but now I realize how difficult it is to even get our boxes ready. I tell her all the time now that at least she had us fed. I don’t even try and make breakfast for Arlo as he doesn’t eat one morsel and I have to eat it, which made me put on a lot of weight. So I’ve decided to not make breakfast anymore and give him simple breakfast like fruits, cheese or sometimes even leftover roti’s.

Add green chilies and curry leaves. Once they are fried a little add the onions.

Keep mixing every 2 minutes until the onions are translucent. Add turmeric and salt.

Now add the tomatoes. Fry until they are a little mushy.

Now add the red chili powder and cumin. Mix it well and now add the rice.

Mix well without the lumps. And serve it with a side of raita.

Recipe Notes

Tips:

The red chilies that I used were given to me by my friend A who grew them in her backyard. They weren't very spicy so I used a ton of them.

The tomatoes too were from her backyard so they didn't have a lot of water in them, which is perfect for rice that we make. The more juicer the tomatoes, the more water they leave out, and those are not good for this kind of rice.

You can add some coriander powder or some garam masala. But since my mother in law makes this for breakfast she doesn't add any masalas, so I followed the same.